Sunday, 8 August 2021
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| today's route |
So one of the oddities of today was that my RV seemed to be rebelling against me or maybe against what I was putting it through. Before I'd gotten very many miles down the road, I had to deal with the following:
* the "check engine" light came on right away and stayed on steadily, then started blinking, then back to steady - with several iterations of this, and not for any reason I could see
* the frig started beeping while I was in a Do Not Pass construction zone - that beep that says I have to turn it off and then turn it back on again for some reason I don't understand
* when I stopped to fix the frig I discovered that the TV wasn't staying in the locked-down position - it's on a swivel arm and never mind that I was tightening it down as much as possible, it was swiveling around like crazy and, of course, it bashed itself into the overhanging cabinet that's nearby (which I didn't find out until later)
* even the ballpoint pen I was taking notes with refused to retract itself unless I bashed it on the pad of paper
After a while of this, I was seriously contemplating buying a new RV (and a new ballpoint).
I got more illustrations of the fact that when South Dakota says "Bump," it means bump.
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
If you take another look at today's route map, you'll see that more than half of it is colored pink. That's the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is the US's 2nd largest reservation for land area and 3rd largest for population. This county has the lowest per capita income in the US, and the unemployment rate is 90%. Life expectancy for men is 47 years and for women is early 50s. I don't know if this next statistic figures into that one, but the teen suicide rate is 4 times the national average.
Interestingly, I didn't see any of that - it didn't show up along US Hwy 18. The poverty being invisible wasn't due to this being a superhighway - it was just a 2-lane road. But there aren't many towns around here. Instead, what I saw were miles of hills and valleys covered with grassland and scattered herds of cows and some horses.
Just before the town of Oglala, I came to a checkpoint for the Oglala Lakota Reservation that stopped all traffic coming in. Two young women took down my license plate number, asked me my name, where I was coming from and going to, and told me there was a mask mandate in the reservation and I wasn't allowed to leave the RV without a mask on. I know tribes in New Mexico especially have been really hard-hit by COVID and didn't blame these folks at all for wanting to protect themselves. After all, I've been trying hard to protect myself too.
I saw a LOT of Magpies - so easy to recognize with that black-and-white color scheme.
Everywhere I've been driving so far in SD I've been seeing signs by the road telling me to drive carefully. This is what one looks like.
This "Why Die?" message is on most of them, but I've also seen "Think!" on some. They all have that "X Marks the Spot" (which is completely meaningless to me in this context) and they all say "Drive Safely." But maybe you can tell that most of this message is in print too small to be read while we're driving down a highway. For a while I figured maybe they were a suicide prevention program or something (which I guess is sort of accurate). I finally pulled over to read the things - sometimes there are 2 or 3 of them all bunched together. Strange sort of program - I guess it's a state program because I see them everywhere along the roads.
I passed scattered clumps of houses and what looked like a round barn, though this one seemed to have been converted to a residence. Then I came to Pine Ridge, the principle town in the county. Pine Ridge has a Boys & Girls Club and a state driving test center along with a few other businesses - and the cheapest gasoline I've found in days.
I passed a sign for Red Cloud Indian School and The Heritage Center Museum. I was curious about them and looked them up. The school was once a Catholic boarding school where children were taught to assimilate into Caucasian culture and weren't allowed to speak their own language. And there was some of the sexual abuse that we've heard so much about in the last decade or so. But sometime back, the school converted to a day school until COVID hit. They've been learning virtually for the last year and I found a lot of interesting information at the school's website. https://www.redcloudschool.org Click on the "Schools" tab for some detail. But I also found an interesting article about the school's new executive director for truth and healing, which isn't a job title I've heard of in other schools, though maybe it should be. Here's the article. https://cruxnow.com/native-american-school-confronts-history
The Heritage Center is a multi-faceted program that in 2019 won one of the South Dakota Governor's Awards in the Arts. You can find their information at that redcloudschool site by clicking the The Heritage Center tab.
I found lots of sunflower farming along the road. Because I was driving east, the sunflowers all had their backs to me.
Wounded Knee Massacre Site
I had a hard time getting Google to cough up directions to the Wounded Knee Massacre Site but eventually figured out how to get there. It's down in a valley. There's not much there now, of course, except a parking area and an informational sign, with a cemetery high on a nearby hill.
I had to take the 2nd photo at an angle because the sun was in the way, so I hope you can read it. There seems to be nothing but sadness in this encounter.
Also at the parking lot was an OST police car. I finally figured out that OST stands for Oglala Sioux Tribe. I know these folks are in the Oglala Lakota Tribe, but I also know that they're in the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and I don't know why I can't figure out the reason for the 2 names. I asked the officer if he was there because he expected trouble, and he said sometimes people come here begging for money, or people come who are high on meth. I'm sure he was telling me the truth, but all that seemed impossible to reconcile with the emptiness I saw today.
On the other hand, there was a car parked up by the cemetery most of the time I was here, and after a bit I saw the cop drive up there and almost immediately saw the other car leave. He may also have been on guard for vandalism or other kinds of trouble. The Indians are targets of racist attacks, too, and despite being a sizeable part of the state's population, I've heard on the radio of some day-to-day racism they've encountered here. Of course, Blacks are a sizeable part of Mississippi's population and that hasn't insulated them from racism either.
Back on the road
I saw a cow in a field licking a utility pole. Really. What would have been on it? Creosote?
Because it was still morning and I had started driving west, the fields of sunflowers were now all facing me. Very cheerful.
I passed the facility for Pine Ridge Building Products - basically they provide outbuildings - sheds, playhouses, mini barns, animal shelters - and they seem to be affiliated with a large building products company in Tennessee. I looked it up because I wondered if this were one of the few employment opportunities on the reservation, but I can't tell.
I saw a small sign that read: "Justice 4 Leon L Lakota III" and wondered what had happened. I found a short obituary for him online - he was just shy of his 51st birthday when he died. But I didn't see any mention of how he died or what aspect of "justice" was hoped for.
I passed a very large herd of horses.
At the entrance to a small housing area, I saw a sign that said, "Due to COVID, only residents are allowed entrance." More precautions these folks are taking.
I heard on the radio that they're expecting about three-quarters of a million people in Sturgis this week. Sturgis ordinarily has about 7,000 residents. Them vs. 750,000? Not a fair fight.
I also heard that Mike Lindell's so-called cyber symposium will be in Sioux Falls beginning in 2 days. I'm glad I've already made plans that don't include going to these places at these times. I'd be afraid that lots of the attendees at either event would be anti-vax and anti-mask.
I passed a sign advertising:
Life-changing Patriotic Experience
Rushmore Borglum Museum
Downtown Keystone.
I recognize the person who spent many years carving that mountain was likely very patriotic, but I can't really see why learning more about him would be a "patriotic experience" for me, let alone life-changing. Oh well. Maybe it is.
I couldn't get gasoline at Pine Ridge because it was way too crowded and I'd've had to wait a long time where they didn't have room for an RV, so I tried to find it on my way back. Turning from US 18 to US 385, I turned left toward the nearby town of Oelrichs. But not a gas station in sight. What I did find, though was this unusual display.
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| not your typical public art |
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| This is the plaque at the base of that sculpture. Oelrichs has about 125 residents now. |
Hot Springs, again
I noticed a historical marker by the road when I passed, but I wasn't able to stop for a photo. Here it is: https://www.hmdb.org/hot-springs Like Hot Springs in Arkansas, the springs here were seen to have health-giving properties, and this marker explains it a little.
I'd come back to Hot Springs to find gasoline, because I knew tomorrow I'd be getting back on the road. But the price was so much higher than in Pine Ridge that I decided I still had enough to wait until we got back there.
We went for a walk in a downtown area, passing a mural on the side of the American Legion showing most of the US's wars. Regarding the war of Southern rebellion, it reads: "620,000 Americans died resolving the slavery question." Can't say I've ever seen it phrased this way.
I stopped at a roadside stand that was advertising Colorado peaches for sale. I'd actually bought some in the grocery store but decided to get a few more. They told me they'd sell me a whole box for $55 (I think), half a box for $30, and 7-8 peaches for $18. I didn't want that many peaches (I wasn't going to make a pie or anything), especially since I'd already bought some, and I didn't want to spend that much money. I guess Colorado peaches are known here in SD like Fredericksburg (TX) peaches are anywhere in central Texas.
Angostura Recreation Area
This was my first SD state park and I was moderately impressed. They divided incoming traffic into 2 lanes - one for boats and the other for everybody else. Two staff members were checking the boats. Zebra mussels have made their way into some of SD's lakes, and the state's trying to halt the advance.
I also noticed that no one was allowed in the office - a staff member besides the boat people came out to check me in. All these staff wore masks, which I'd already noticed is unusual in South Dakota.
As I've done in other states, I bought an annual park pass. I knew I had reservations at a number of state parks during this month and, with the usual park entrance fee of $8/night, I figured the annual fee of $36 was a bargain. I'm staying at this park for 2 nights, so that's nearly half the cost right there.
The state park lies on one side of Angostura Reservoir. Angostura is Spanish, the park says, for "narrows" though I'm not sure what that has to do with this lake, which doesn't look very narrow to me. Despite it being a hot, sunny Sunday, there weren't many people on the beaches around the lake. There were lots of boaters, though.
I had a great view from near an Overlook - if I'd climbed a long steep set of stairs, I'd likely have had a wonderful view of the whole county. But it was too hot for either Gracie or me to be interested in that climb, and even Dext might have faded out before finishing the round trip. And I had a good view anyway from down below. It was 96° at 3:20 PM, so it really was a hot day.
I noticed, when I left the Overlook area to go to our campsite, that the "check engine" light wasn't coming on any more. One mechanic had told me that sometimes, if the engine gets turned off and on again some particular number of times, the warning light resets. So theoretically my warning light may have reset itself.
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